The city may not be Mafia headquarters Palermo, Sicily, or the Chicago of Al Capone, but Sydney can weave a wickedly twisted gangster tale.
Hitman Christopher "Mr. Rent-a-Kill" Flannery has not been seen since May 9, 1985, when he left his luxury Sydney apartment carrying a passport and a trusty .38 pistol.Is he alive or dead? The coroner's inquest into what happened to Flannery, 36, has now been running for 21/2 years and has heard evidence from the Who's Who of Sydney crime, yet the truth seems as illusive as an honest gangster.
According to those in the know, Flannery has had a meat cleaver put through his head, been fitted with cement shoes, been minced in a tree cutter and scattered as fertilizer, garotted and entombed in a building site, or shot by corrupt ex-police.
Whatever the truth, it's a fair bet someone was out to get Flannery - a fit, suntanned man, with a penchant for open-neck shirts and chunky gold jewelry, who reportedly notched up 14 kills at $39,500 a hit.
In January 1985 Flannery survived a machine-gun attack on his Sydney home and moved his family to the safety of a high-rise, inner city apartment.
His wife Kathleen, who the inquest has heard was the brains behind her husband, is convinced crooked police snatched her husband four months later and are linked to his murder.
Kathleen told the inquest her car was boobytrapped with gelignite after her husband disappeared, but a police informer said it was a set-up to gain sympathy and that she bought the explosives. In giving evidence, Kathleen's memory often failed, "Oh gee, oh gosh. I really can't remember," she often said.
But the Australia's National Crime Authority in 1986 charged Sydney standover man "Tough" Tommy Domican, with attempted murder of Flannery, his wife and daughter, saying Domican was convinced the hitman was after him.
A "standover man" is a criminal who intimidates people with violence or threats of violence.
At Domican's trial in 1988, rapist and police informer Fred Many said Domican told him in prison that the first hit missed Flannery, but that he was now in a "cabbage cage in the water."
Domican was convicted and sentenced to 14 years jail, but Australia's High Court later quashed the conviction, saying a jury might regard Many's evidence as worthless.
Domican, a regular spectator at the Flannery inquest, has denied involvement in the hitman's disappearance.